Believe it or not I'm still alive. I figured I should post something, at least get some value out of my $70/year for this space.

New theme for the site, what do you think?

Same high level story for me, still with the same client, and spending most of my time in beautiful and scenic DSM, with about a month a week in CMH. Work has certainly been keeping me busy, I've moved into a different team lead role, of a much larger team, with significantly more moving parts, it's fun, but frustrating at the same time.

"Naturally, the commone people don't want war, but after all, it is the leders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag people along whether it is a democracy, or a faschist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danter. It works the same in every country"

-Hermann Goering, Hitler's Reich-Marshall at the Nuremberg Trials after WWII.

I'm not sure anyone really reads this anymore, since I've been so horrific about posting, however. I figured I'd throw out an advertisement for an upcoming point - counterpoint blog I'm going to be posting with my cousin over on dmjuice.com. I hesitate to use the term "right-wing nut-job" especially when talking about family, so lets just suffice it to say that Jake and my political views differ, um, a bit. This will be the first, in hopefully some sort of a series of our battling view points. Hopefully people will at least be entertained, if not given pause to think about their political views, and where they're aligned.

Our first topic gas/oil prices, and what the best approach is to fixing the whole mess. I'll admit that this first entry will probably end up being somewhat Republican vs. Democrat babble, but hopefully we'll be able to cut through the party lines somewhat and get at some real new thought, but then again maybe not, that might not be nearly entertaining enough.

So stay tuned. When it goes up, I'll post the entry here and the link, and welcome your comments/arguments.

The Walton family, which dominated the upper echelons of the Forbes list in recent years, tumbled in this year's ranking as stock in the world's largest retailer dropped more than 10 percent in the past year.

S. Robson Walton, known as Rob, who last year ranked 10th, fell to 19th with $15.8 billion. Christy Walton and Jim Walton tied for 17th with $15.9 billion each, while Alice Walton followed Rob Walton at $15.7 billion. Helen Walton, mother of the clan, did not make it into the top 20, landing at No. 21 with $15.6 billion.

I finally took pictures of the new entertainment center. Doesn't look too bad, if I do say so myself. It's from Ikea, but none the less much better than the coffee table I used for a week. I was super excited to see how well the computer fits in the the center.

...new insights on evolution at its smallest scale were a major yet little-noticed reason why a federal judge late last year struck down a plan in Dover, Pa., that would have put intelligent design in public school classrooms.

So as it turns out "Intelligent Design" isn't science after all.

To advocates of intelligent design, the human sperm's tiny tail bears potent evidence that Charles Darwin was wrong--it is, they say, a molecular machine so complex that only God could have produced it.

But biologists now are starting to piece together how such intricate bits of biochemistry evolved. Although the basic research was not meant as a response to intelligent design, it is unraveling the very riddles that proponents said could not be solved.

In contrast, intelligent design advocates admit they still lack any way of using hard evidence to test their theories, which many biologists find revealing.